


[Temp title] Marichat à la fac

by trashcatontherooftop



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrinette, Aged-Up Character(s), Alya Césaire Ships It, Bad Parent Gabriel Agreste, Domestic fluff - sort of, F/F, F/M, Flatshare, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Growing Up, LadyNoir - Freeform, M/M, Marichat, Marinette is in denial, Multi, Not-quite-platonic Alyanette, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Roommates, Shenanigans, Students, adrienette - Freeform, akuma fights, auberge espagnole type situation, ladrien, miracuclass
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22656184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashcatontherooftop/pseuds/trashcatontherooftop
Summary: Everyone assumes that after the Identity Reveal, the Lovesquare will dissolve into just one relationship - for better or for worse.But what if it didn't?What if, for their own safety and sanity, Adrien and Marinette decided to keep the separate bonds between their superhero and civilian selves? Would Chat Noir continue to visit Marinette's balcony? Would their dynamic change while they fought akumas together? Would they become closer as classmates, or would it make everything more awkward?And what would happen when they started university and moved out of their parents' homes? Could Marinette keep their secrets while sharing a flat with six of her classmates, including her best friend, Ladyblogger and journalist-in-training, Alya?
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alya Césaire/Nino Lahiffe, Ivan Bruel/Mylène Haprèle, Marc Anciel/Nathaniel Kurtzberg
Comments: 45
Kudos: 262





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WOO so I'm doing this. I get the feeling this one's going to be pretty epic. Even though my original aim was (and still is) to write a bunch of sweet aged-up marichat fluff, I have way too many ideas for it to *just* be that.
> 
> Enjoy...
> 
> PS - again, I am rubbish at coming up with titles, so any suggestions are welcome. I'll probably go with another pun though, and may not choose a definitive title until I know exactly where this fic is going.

Marinette had assumed, with more than a twinge of melancholy, that the visits from Chat Noir would be over once she moved out of the bakery. How could they not be, now that she had no private balcony, no skylight for him to knock on? Sure, she had direct access to the roof of her new flatshare from her bedroom – but so did Nathaniel, Mylène, Ivan, and anybody coming through the kitchen, which was to say, all six of her roommates – plus whoever happened to be visiting at the time. Chat Noir would have to be _insane_ to think he could get away with coming to see her now, and when he inevitably did show up, she told him so.

" _Are you insane?!_ Get in here!" She hissed, yanking him through her patio door and poking her head out nervously to check the other windows. She couldn't see anyone looking out, but that didn't mean nobody had seen him.

She closed the door carefully and turned, hands on hips, to confront him.

"Chat, _what the hell?_ "

He blinked at her with a wide-eyed innocence that she knew was completely put on. "I just came to see you, Princess, like I usually do." Marinette scowled, and the innocent stare gave way to a shit-eating grin. "Okay, maybe I like messing with you a bit."

She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and let out an exasperated sigh. "Were you careful not to be seen at least?" she asked.

"Of course, who do you take me for? I'm Chat Noir, master of the night. I'm practically a ninja." He struck an over-the-top kung fu pose. His smirk made her want to throw him out again.

"That smirk makes me want to throw you out again," she said.

"Nooo, Princess, please, I promise I'll be good!" he begged, eyes wide.

How he could go from insufferable tease to adorable kitty in less than a second would always elude her, she thought. She sighed and turned, pulling the makeshift curtain over the window, the gloom of her new bedroom now only broken by the desk lamp.

"Okay, but _be quiet_. The walls here are paper thin."

His face split into a happy grin and he sat down on her couch, bouncing like a child. "So how is it, living with six of your friends?"

The way he asked the question, like _he_ was the one embarking on the adventure of sharing a home with six fellow students, plucked painfully at the fabric of her heart and made her want to hug him. She sat next to him instead, tucking one leg under her.

"It's not even been a week yet," she reminded him. "For now, it's still pretty cool."

"You mentioned paper-thin walls?" One corner of his mask quirked up a little, and she rolled her eyes again.

"Ugh, yes. I'm coming to realize there are _several_ disadvantages to being the seventh wheel on the Roof Squad bus."

"'Roof Squad?'"

"It's our official flatshare name. As opposed to - oh, I didn't tell you about the Ground Floor Gang! They're our rivals. They had a karaoke party two nights ago, and Kitty Section just happened to be over rehearsing. They tried to out-sing us." Her eyes glimmered with the heat of remembered competition.

Chat Noir's eyes widened. "What did you do?"

"We kicked their asses, obviously. It got pretty intense though. Officer Roger had to come and calm everyone down." She giggled guiltily at the memory. There were four floors between their flat and the ground floor, and none of the people living on those floors had been very happy about their sing-off.

Chat Noir was regarding her appraisingly. "Marinette Dupain-Cheng, getting in trouble with the law. Does Sabine know about this?"

Marinette laughed. "Oh please, Chat. You _know_ I was the one trying to calm everyone down."

"So you did no singing at all?"

She bit back a guilty smile. "Okay, maybe I did. A little. And maybe I was the one who initially yelled "sing off!", but I'm _also_ the one who talked to Officer Roger, so."

"So nothing, you rebel," he grinned, pushing her shoulder so that she flopped against the back of the chaise, giggling. His smile turned wistful. "I wish I could've been there."

On impulse, she grabbed his arm and pulled him down to her level, laying her head on his shoulder.

"That would've been incredible," she agreed. "Chat Noir crashing in and taking our side. With your caterwauling, we'd have been unstoppable." She reached up towards the ceiling, fingers splayed, and he giggled.

"Damn right."

She dropped her hand to join its twin and laced her fingers around his bicep. He let his head fall onto hers, and a familiar, comfortable silence fell between them.

"How are you settling in?" she asked after a while.

He sighed through his nose. "I'm not," he admitted. "I've unpacked the bare minimum. I hate it there. I always thought that when I finally got my own place, everything would be different, but it's more of the same. Lonelier even."

Marinette hummed in sympathy, snuggling closer to him. Chat Noir lifted his arm out of her grasp so he could wrap it around her shoulders, pulling her closer.

"I gotta admit, I missed this," she muttered, half-hoping he wouldn't hear her.

He did, though. "We saw each other two days ago," he pointed out with a smile in his voice.

"It's not the same," she insisted, and to her surprise, he didn't tease her any further.

"I missed this too," he murmured instead. He let out a short laugh and added: "Why do you think I'm here in the first place?"

"To mess with me?" she asked, poking him in the ribs.

She immediately regretted it when he launched into a brutal tickle attack.

"No – hahaha – not fair – haha! S-stop – hahahahaha _stop it_ they're gonna hear us!" she panted.

He stopped, towering over her, grinning, and she dug her fingers into his arms to resist the temptation to launch a counter attack. If Nathaniel was still in his room then he had definitely heard her just now. She scowled.

"What am I going to tell my roommates if they catch you in here?"

He backed up, crossing his arms over his puffed out chest. "Just tell them the truth – that you're best friends with the amazing Chat Noir."

She sat up and snorted, pushing him off her. "Sure, that's plausible. May I remind you that my other best friend, aka – Ladyblog girl and aspiring journalist, is just down the hall?"

Chat Noir smirked, settling cross-legged next to her. "Alya would _flip_."

"She'd insist on sleeping in my room just so she could see you come over," Marinette said. "It'd be the end of what little privacy I have left in this place."

He groaned at the thought, and added: "She'd want an exclusive interview every single time I came."

"You'd be forced to re-watch akuma fights so she could film your reaction and commentary."

"What? Is that a real thing?"

"That's her latest big idea, yeah." Marinette grinned at the dismay in his face. "Come on, it's not that bad. Last time she made you read out mean tweets, and you said it was kinda fun."

"I just don't get why I have to do this and Ladybug doesn't," he grumbled, glaring at her. Her grin only widened.

"Alya knows you're a pushover. You just gotta learn to say no."

"I can't say no to Alya. She's not just some journalist who wants a scoop, like Nadja Chamak and those others. Alya actually cares about us."

"Hey, I used to babysit for Nadja. She's not that bad. She cares about Ladybug and Chat Noir, too, she's just under more pressure to get big ratings because she's not her own boss and her paycheck depends on it."

"Well I hope Alya never becomes like her," Chat Noir muttered sullenly. "I like Manon as well as I like any other kid, but I've never been comfortable around her mother."

A quiet knock interrupted their conversation. They froze, their eyes locking in panic as Ivan's voice floated through the door.

"Marinette? Can I come in?"

"Uhhhh! Not yet!" Marinette tried to keep the panic out of her voice, but it was an octave higher than usual and she was sure Ivan could hear it. She waved her hands at Chat Noir frantically, telling him to get out or hide or do _something_ before their cover was completely blown.

What he did was completely unexpected.

"Plagg, claws in," he whispered, and suddenly it was Adrien sitting next to her on the chaise.

Her throat closed over the breath she'd been about to take and she stared at him in bewilderment. Plagg zipped inside his shirt without a word, acknowledging the urgent nature of the situation. Adrien gestured desperately towards the door. _Say something!_ He mouthed.

"Marinette?"

Marinette took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Come in Ivan," she said in an almost-normal voice.

Ivan's head appeared round the door and took in the mess, the gloom, and Adrien sitting on her chaise, with little more than a raised eyebrow. "We're all eating together on the roof. Wanna come?"

"Can Adrien eat with us?" she asked.

"Sure. Alya made some kind of curry."

Marinette's eyes widened. "Um, okay. Are you sure... well, okay, never mind. But, um, do we have any milk?"

Adrien cocked his head curiously. It was a very Chat gesture, and she hoped Ivan hadn't noticed it. "Is there something wrong with Alya's cooking?"

"Not wrong, no," Marinette specified. "It's actually delicious, but you have to be able to handle chili. She refuses to cook without it."

Ivan frowned. "Maybe Mylène and Nathaniel should sit this one out, then."

"Just make sure there's milk on the table," Marinette said. "We'll be out in a minute."

Ivan nodded and shut the door.

" _Are you insane?_ " Marinette hissed at him for the second time in half an hour. "What am I supposed to tell them? That you teleported here?"

Adrien shrugged, looking more than a little uncomfortable. He'd moved away from her just slightly, so that they weren't touching any more. Or maybe she'd moved away from him. "I'm sorry, Marinette, I just... there was nowhere to hide."

Marinette glared at him and pointed wordlessly to her bed. A bunk bed, similar to the one she'd had at home. Climbing up without making any noise and hiding there would have been easy for Chat Noir.

It was hard to tell in the gloom, but Adrien's face looked a little redder than usual as he muttered something incoherent.

"Say that again?"

"I _said_ it'd be even worse if they found me up there as Chat Noir. Besides," he added, brightening. "Now I get to eat with you guys."

Marinette sighed at the hopeful look in his eyes. She knew that if she wanted to, she could tell him to go, and he would. He wouldn't even hold it against her. But there was no point now that Ivan had seen him, and besides, she couldn't deprive him of the opportunity to eat with his friends. She of all people knew how lonely he was.

"Fine," she grumbled. "But if Alya asks, I'm saying I have no idea how you got into my room. You're on your own on that one."

He sniggered. "I'll just say I teleported there."

Marinette let out a reluctant laugh as she stood up and stretched. Ever since they'd discovered each others' identities, teasing Alya about the reasons for their sudden closeness had become a shared passtime. The official reason was that they'd gotten to know each other better after working on a project, but Alya had never bought that. Marinette dreaded the day when Alya did find out – something that seemed more and more inevitable as they got older and Alya's instincts got sharper.

She'd also become more tactful, though, and respected their desire not to tell her if they didn't want to. Marinette loved Alya even more for that because she knew just how frustrating it was for her to not know.

"Ready for the Spanish Inquisition?" she asked, stepping towards the door.

Adrien opened the door for her, bowing her out with a grin. "Lead the way," he said.


	2. A Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so tired guys, have some not-quite-platonic Alyanette

"Okay, spill."

"Spill what?"

"Girl, you _know_ what."

Marinette shot a deadpan glare at her other best friend – the one she now lived with, whose scrutiny she could no longer escape.

Alya stared back.

Marinette sighed and flopped back onto the bed.

"There's nothing to tell, Alya. We're friends, close friends, but as I've told you _at least_ a million times since _collège_ , that's it."

"And neither of you have a problem with this," Alya said unbelievingly.

"No!"

"Okay. Sure. Explain to me why you're so unhappy, then."

"I'm not unhappy!"

Alya's left eyebrow rose so high, Marinette thought it might actually touch her hairline.

"Alya, please, it's fine!" she insisted.

Alya sighed and came to sit on the bed just behind Marinette, lightly tapping her head to tell her to shift it into her lap. She began stroking Marinette's hair, and Marinette knew that she wouldn't let the subject slide.

"Look, it's not like you have to label this... whatever it is you guys have." She smooshed Marinette's cheeks together. "I just want my children to be happy! And right now, neither of you are happy. I can tell."

Marinette tugged Alya's hands from her face and held them. She hated when Alya did this, as well-intentioned as it was.

And understandable, Tikki had told her. Alya didn't have the whole story. She didn't know that they'd discovered each others' identities at the worst possible moment in their relationships – all four of the very different relationships they'd developed between their superhero and civilian selves, not to mention their respective partners. Alya didn't know that both of them had been dating other people, that the reason Marinette had spent a week crying in bed that one time wasn't because of her break-up with Luka, but because she'd been kicking herself for rejecting Chat Noir. She didn't know about the agreement they had come to when, after a week of giving her the space she'd asked for, Chat Noir had turned up on her balcony and begged for things to return to normal. Or as normal as they could be, now they knew.

They'd decided on the rules together, in order to preserve their friendships and partnership in and out of the mask. No sudden changes were to take place, no head pats in front of their classmates, no flirting when he came over as Chat Noir (not that he'd done any of _that_ lately), no detransforming in her room – because while Marinette could explain to her parents that Chat Noir had just popped in at her balcony after patrol to check on her, the same could not be said of Adrien. At first they'd avoided transforming in front of each other at all, in case Hawkmoth realized they knew each other and found a way to use that knowledge to his advantage, but they scrapped that rule after the third time she'd had to save Adrien from an akumatized fan without the help of Chat Noir. Essentially, the aim was to avoid changing their dynamic so that they could still fight akumas, study together, and confide in each other.

It hadn't worked quite as well as they'd hoped, but it _had_ worked. The biggest, most obvious flaw in their plan was that of course they couldn't pretend nothing was different in front of their friends. At first it had been horribly awkward, and they'd spent a good two weeks avoiding questions as to why they were acting like strangers all of a sudden. When they'd been put with Alya and Nino for a science project, their best friends had ditched them at Nino's while Alya went back home to fetch materials she'd "forgotten". They'd decided then that it would be better if they went back to being friends at least, and spent another two weeks avoiding questions as to their relationship status, given the sudden closeness Nino and Alya had returned to find after only an hour.

So of course Alya didn't understand why Adrien and Marinette couldn't be together.

("To be honest, neither do I," Tikki had said, although she didn't push it like Alya did.)

Alya's humming stopped – Marinette hadn't realized she'd started – and her fingers, which had been tracing the lines of Marinette's face, paused in their ministrations.

"You should kiss him," she said.

Marinette's eyes blinked open, staring at her best friend. There was a gleam in Alya's eye that gave her goosebumps.

"It doesn't have to mean anything," Alya insisted, as though it were really that simple. "You and I kiss when we're drunk, it's fine. And if it _really_ doesn't mean anything, you'll both know."

"It doesn't mean anything between you and me because we're straight," Marinette pointed out.

Alya's eyes travelled appraisingly down Marinette's body and back. "Speak for yourself," she said, smirking.

Marinette hoped Alya couldn't see the blush tinting her skin in the lamplight.

"Okay, well _I'm_ straight," she said, with more certitude than she felt. She reached up suddenly, grabbed Alya's shoulders, and pulled her down for an upside-down peck on the lips. "If I weren't, I'd have to steal you from Nino," she said, grinning wickedly.

"Mm, please steal me from Nino," Alya giggled, her hair tickling Marinette's face.

"Nah, he's my bro. I couldn't do that to my bro."

"Oh no. Nope, you are _not_ allowed to start talking like my doofus of a boyfriend!" Alya exclaimed, grabbing a pillow and holding it up menacingly.

"Why not, dude?"

Marinette dodged the blow and rolled off the bed, grabbing the other pillow to launch a counter attack, but Alya surprised her by catching her around the waist and pulling her back onto the bed. She then proceeded to pepper Marinette's face with kisses and increasingly slobbery raspberries until she begged for mercy.

Once they'd gotten their breath back, Alya flopped down next to Marinette and lifted her arms expectantly until Marinette wriggled into them. She draped an arm around Alya's waist and fidgeted in search of a comfortable position for her head.

"Stop wriggling," Alya complained.

"I'm trying to get comfortable without stabbing your boob with my chin."

"Just lie on the boob."

"Too big. My neck would hurt."

Eventually they found a compromise and settled into relative stillness.

"Actually, I think you're the only person Nino wouldn't mind sharing me with," Alya said.

"Mm," Marinette replied noncommitally.

She still remembered their housewarming party two days ago. There had been way more alcohol than any of them were used to, and Marinette had been hard pushed to stick to her self-imposed two-unit maximum. It was necessary, though, for the sake of her secret identity, and if she was being completely honest, two units were more than enough to get her pleasantly drunk.

Alya had no such qualms, of course, and had retained very few memories of the evening. She definitely didn't remember kissing Marinette with quite a bit more passion than they were used to (though she had seen the photographic evidence), nor did she remember Adrien nudging a gobsmacked Nino and asking him if he was jealous, only for Nino to chug his beer and declare that no, nuh-uh, Marinette could kiss his girlfriend any time she wanted.

Marinette had pulled away from Alya just long enough to narrow her eyes and threaten to beat him with her shoe if he started looking at _her_ like that, to which Nino had waggled his eyebrows suggestively before spending the next five minutes fleeing Marinette and her shoe.

"Nino's like a brother to me," Marinette said belatedly. "A very _monogamous_ brother. It'd break his heart if I stole you."

"Pretty sure he's still got a crush on you, though," Alya said.

"You think all our friends have a crush on me."

"That's because they do."

Marinette snorted.

"I still think you should kiss him," Alya said.

Marinette lifted her head to peer at Alya.

"You think I should kiss Nino?"

"I was talking about Adrien. I still think you should kiss him."

Marinette let out a long whine and Alya snickered in response.

"You didn't think I'd forgotten, did you?"

"I should've known better," Marinette muttered.

"So tell me why kissing Adrien would be a bad idea."

Marinette rolled onto her back, her head still lying on Alya's arm. "Let's imagine, hypothetically, that you're right and we do still have feelings for each other after all these years. What if we started dating, only for his dad to oppose it because I'm not prestigious enough for his son, and then Adrien has to choose? What if dating the son of a famous fashion designer makes me look like a fraud and nobody wants to take me on as an intern? What if the opposite happens, and I end up succesful, only I'll never know if it was because I was good or because I was dating Gabriel Agreste's son? Or, what if we're actually not compatible and we break up and can't stand the sight of each other, and then we ruin Nino's and your wedding day by bickering all the time?"

_What if it turns out that I do have feelings for him, but he doesn't have feelings for me?_ They'd be right back to square one and her unrequited crush in collège, only it'd be ten times worse because he'd know about it, and the delicate balance of their partnership would fall apart.

_What if it ruined our dynamic so badly that we couldn't fight together any more, and Hawkmoth won?_

"Girl, you spend way too much time in your own head," Alya said, knocking Marinette's forehead with soft knuckles. "If I asked myself all those questions, Nino and I never would've gotten together. Hey, what if _we_ split up and ruin _your_ wedding day?"

"You guys aren't allowed to split up," said Marinette. "If you do, you'll have to share custody of Adrien and me."

"No way, you're _my_ babies. Nino too much of a wuss to call you out on your bullshit, or make sure Adrien gets enough sleep. No court would refuse me full custody."

"How do you make sure Adrien gets enough sleep?"

"I'll tell you the day you need that knowledge," Alya said, rolling onto her side to squeeze Marinette. She pressed a sloppy kiss to her cheek and grinned. "Though you'd definitely be better than me at getting him into bed."

Marinette blew a raspberry onto the tip of her friend's nose and got a lick on the forehead in return.

"Okay, I'm going now," she said, getting up. "When you start licking me is when I need to leave."

"Damn right, it's about time I got a little privacy in here."

"You dragged me into your room as soon as Adrien was out the door," Marinette pointed out, poking Alya in the ribs and darting away before she could retaliate.

"Go to your room!" Alya called out as she opened the door. "Wait, send your father in first."

"Ew, Nino's not my dad!"

"Hey, that's hurtful," said Nino, poking his head out of the kitchen.

"Alya wants you," Marinette reported, passing him on the way to her room.

"Hm, I bet she does."

Marinette made retching noises as he disappeared into Alya's room with a smirk, shutting the door behind him. She slipped into her own room and shut the door, smiling, only to hear her phone vibrating on her desk.

She reached it as it stopped, and just had time to see "11 missed calls from Adrien" before it started ringing again.

Her thumb shook slightly as she swiped to answer.

"Adrien? What's going on?"

"Oh thank god, I left Plagg in your room," he said in a rush.

Marinette breathed a sigh of relief.

"I thought there was an akuma or something!"

"Where were you without your phone?"

"Alya dragged me off for a Talk in her room. I'm sorry, Adrien."

"Alya would know if there was an akuma alert, so it's fine," he said. "I'm sorry about Plagg. He slipped out of my shirt before I went to dinner and said he wanted to talk to Tikki. I... completely forgot about him." She could hear the shame in his voice.

Marinette stepped over to her desk and lifted the lid of the shoebox marked "PINCUSHIONS" where she'd made a little nest for Tikki. The kwamis were curled up together, asleep, and Marinette wished for the hundredth time that she could take photos of them.

"Plagg," she sing-songed quietly, scratching him behind the ear. The miniature cat god cracked open one luminous green slit of an eye.

"He forgot about me, didn't he?" he grumbled.

"Yup."

Plagg yawned, but didn't move. "He doesn't have his key on him I bet," he said with a malevolent sneer.

"Adrien, are you stuck outside your building right now?" Marinette asked into the phone.

There was a pause.

"...Yes."

Marinette didn't bother smothering her laughter. "Idiot. You should've just come back."

"I was already here by the time I realized," he replied grumpily. "Just tell him to come."

"I'm not going," Plagg said before Marinette had even opened her mouth. "He'll have to come get me. Serves him right."

"Come on Plagg, that's a forty minute metro ride. It's past midnight," Marinette cajoled him, but Plagg just yawned again in reply. She sighed, glanced at her schedule for the next day, and decided that since she'd already ruined her sleep schedule, another hour or so swinging across the rooftops of Paris probably wouldn't make much of a difference.

"I'll bring him to you," she said into the phone.

"Oh my god you will? Thanks Marinette, you're a lifesaver!"

"You owe me one," she said, and hung up. "Come on Plagg, say goodbye to Tikki."

"You should've made him come back," Plagg grumbled. "You're spoiling him."

"I once lost Tikki for like an hour while she was sick. _Chloe_ picked her up. Be grateful I'm not your weilder."

"You two really are made for each other," Plagg sighed, nudging Tikki awake with an affectionate push of his head.

Marinette rolled her eyes and turned to peer out of the window. Everyone had gone to their rooms, although red-tinted light still spilled from Nathaniel's window. At least his curtain was drawn. She couldn't hear anything. He must be working, or maybe he'd fallen asleep with the light on.

Tikki had woken up, inhaled a supermarket cookie, and was nuzzling her cheek.

"I'm ready," she said, still sleepy.

Marinette kissed the black dot on her kwami's head.

"I'll bake you some real cookies tomorrow, I promise."

That woke Tikki up, and she did a gleeful little loop in the air.

Marinette smiled and stepped back from the window.

"Tikki, spots on!"


	3. A nighttime visit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My children, they are such beautiful idiots, I love them so much.
> 
> This is a Ladrien AND an Adrienette chapter. Does it count as domestic fluff? Have I snuck enough Marinette-brand overthinking in there for it to qualify as angst? Did I really just spend an entire page on them making a bed? Was it worth staying up late and ruining my sleep schedule for? (Yes)
> 
> My brain gremlins are happy at least. Enjoy!

Ladybug swung across the rooftops towards the 6th arrondissement, enjoying the rush of the wind across her cheeks and the stretch and pull that warmed her muscles. Occasionally she surprised someone looking out of the window or down in the street, but at this hour, Paris was relatively quiet. Between moving out and starting their first week of classes, Ladybug and Chat Noir had decided to skip a couple of patrols, and she realized she'd missed the exercise. Somehow, lugging boxes and furniture up five flights of stairs and running between classes and metro stations wasn't quite the same.

So despite the late hour, despite knowing that she was going to _hate_ Adrien and Plagg for this the next morning, she couldn't bring herself to be upset with either of them. Besides, she was curious to see his new flat. Chat Noir had pointed the building out to her during their last patrol, the night before he'd moved in, but she hadn't been inside yet. He'd said it was the same as his previous home, but Ladybug had trouble taking the Agreste mansion and creating a student accommodation version of that in her mind.

There had always been several very good, very sensible reasons as to why Chat Noir always visited Marinette while Ladybug almost never visited Adrien. The first of which was that Chat Noir was a trusted friend and welcome in the Dupain-Cheng household (although Sabine did not approve of him keeping her daughter up playing video games on a school night and had made this abundantly clear). The same could not be said of Ladybug in the Agreste mansion. Gabriel Agreste trusted nobody, with the possible exception of his secretary, and sneaking friends into the house had historically resulted in far greater punishments for Adrien than sneaking out had.

(Marinette had puzzled over this strange logic for a long time. As her dad had pointed out once, it was better to have your kids' friends over and know they was safe upstairs, rather than force them to sneak out who-knew-where. It made her wonder if Gabriel Agreste had something to hide.)

The other reason was that, as far as anybody knew, Ladybug and Adrien weren't friends. They were just a civilian who had been saved several times by a superhero, and their relationship was nothing more than professional.

Then again, Marinette and Chat Noir hadn't been friends at first, either. Their friendship had snuck up on her, between him saving her when she couldn't escape to transform, and him visiting her balcony, occasionally at first, then regularly. After the Big Reveal (as he called it), it had made a heartbreaking sort of sense: Adrien had always wanted to be friends with Marinette, but Marinette had been so caught up in her huge, debilitating crush on him that she'd unwittingly built a wall between them. So Adrien had compensated by getting to know her as Chat Noir. When she'd realized this, Marinette had vowed never to let her feelings for him get in the way of their friendship. And thanks to their precautions, it had worked. More or less.

Now, though, they could see each other whenever they wanted, as whoever they wanted. Adrien's right to live alone and make his own way to school rather than continue to be driven everywhere by his bodyguard had been hard fought, and Adrien had only won it by accepting to go to HEC Paris, the most prestigious business school in the city, so that he could continue to work for his father's company once his modelling career was over. It wasn't what he wanted to do, but it wasn't like Adrien had any big dreams (or so he said), and the deal gave him more freedom – _real_ freedom – than he'd ever had in his life.

Which meant that now, nothing was really stopping Ladybug from visiting Adrien, as long as she was careful not to be seen. It made a lot more sense than Chat Noir visiting Marinette. While their friendship wasn't technically a secret, even Marinette's parents didn't know quite how often he came to hang out, nor how close they really were. It would be a lot more difficult to hide that from her six meddlesome roommates, and Marinette really didn't feel like arguing with Alya over which of the two boys she was really crushing on.

She saw Adrien huddling by the glass doors at the front of his building and swung down to join him. It was a tall, sleek, dark grey tower surrounded by meticulously trimmed lawns and hedges, brand new or nearly. It had none of the elaborate architecture of the Agreste mansion, but like the mansion, it screamed _money_.

"I thought you told Nino you'd be fine without a jacket?" she teased by way of greeting.

"I was until I had to stand still outside for thirty minutes," he grumbled.

"Twenty minutes. And you're welcome."

"Thank you," he said belatedly.

Ladybug opened her yoyo and reached inside to pull Plagg out, but Adrien put a hands on hers.

"Not here," he mumbled, glancing up towards the corners of the building. Ladybug didn't need to look to understand what he meant: she should have known a place like this would have security cameras.

"I guess this means I'll have to carry you in then?" She grinned.

"Guess you will," he smirked back, and her heart did a double take.

Maybe sneaking in to see him as Ladybug was a bad idea after all.

"Okay, well, show me where your window is," she said, moving away from him. She raised her eyes to scan the windows that lined the building, like row upon row of perfect stitches.

"Fourth floor, fourth window from the left," he said, coming to stand next to her and pointing at the only open window in the entire front of the building.

"I hope your neighbours don't see this and start thinking they can call me whenever they forget their keys."

Ladybug grabbed him around the waist and pulled him against her without really thinking about it. She often carried civilians like this. She wasn't expecting the contact of his body to awaken threads of heat under her skin, spreading like wildfire as his arms wound themselves around her shoulders. The contrast of this new heat with the cool night air made her shiver.

_Definitely a bad idea._

"Is something wrong?"

His warm breath drew a blush where it touched her cheek. Was his voice a little rougher than usual or was it just her?

"I'm not sure that window frame is meant to hold the weight of two people," she said distractedly. "I don't want whoever owns this building coming after me for damaging their property."

"That's never stopped you before."

"Usually we're fighting akumas so I can count on my miracle cure. This isn't like that."

He laughed like he could tell she was stalling, and she scowled.

"It's fine, I got it."

She threw her yoyo all the way up to the roof of the building and used it to pull them up until they were level with his window. She swung them inside, set him down on the floor, and turned to leave.

"Where are you going?"

Ladybug glared at him over her shoulder. The lop-sided smile on his face died, replaced with uncertainty.

"Home?" she said.

"What about Plagg?"

Plagg. Right.

She slipped off the windowsill with an annoyed huff, opened her yoyo, and pulled out a disgruntled Plagg.

"About time," the kwami grumbled, phasing through her fingers pinching the scruff of his neck and disappearing among the boxes piled up around the room. Ladybug snapped her yoyo shut and turned to leave for the second time.

"Did I do something wrong?"

His hand on her wrist was as light as a question, but his voice was heavy. Ladybug felt her stomach twist into knots. She was being mean and immature, and he didn't deserve it. It wasn't his fault he made her feel... things.

"No," she said, half turning. She hoped the smile she offered him would be enough reassurance. "Sorry, I'm just tired. I have class at 8 o' clock tomorrow."

"That's not all it is," he said, and she knew she wouldn't be getting off that easily. _Why are all my friends so nosy?_ She spun to face him, letting the exasperation she felt show on her face.

"Come on, first Alya and now you?"

"Alya? What did she say?"

Ladybug threw her hands up in the air and pushed out an irritated sigh.

"The usual. She ships us. But also, she thinks we're not happy, so it kind of annoyed me when you said the same thing just now."

"I didn't say that."

"It was implied."

He opened his mouth, then shut it again at the look on her face. His hands rose, hovered, dropped back to his sides. If they had been any other version of themselves, he would have hugged her, she knew. But Ladybug and Adrien weren't close. They couldn't be close, for all the reasons they'd spoken of, and the one reason they'd never mentioned: Ladybug and Adrien had been in love with each other at one point, and if they fell in love again, knowing what they knew, they ran the risk of messing up and losing the friendship – _friendships_ , plural – they had.

Not to mention the danger if Hawkmoth found out.

"I'm sorry I called you out here when you have class tomorrow," he said, rubbing the back of his head. "You can go now, I'll be fine."

He looked so _not_ fine, though, and she knew leaving him like this would make everything worse.

She moved away from the window, away from any prying eyes, grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the sleek white leather sofa filling the space between two doors. Before she got there, she turned to look at him.

"Tikki, spots off."

He squinted against the flash of pink light that filled the orange gloom, red second-skin fabric morphing into soft cotton and denim. His eyes just had time to widen in the dark, watching Tikki zip off to explore, before she pulled him into a tight hug.

"I'm really sorry," she mumbled into his shoulder. "None of this is your fault."

It took him a second, but he returned the hug with twice the strength, nuzzling her hair with a sigh. The hot threads under her skin were back, but they were easier to ignore when she knew for sure that he didn't feel the same way.

"You mess me up sometimes, you know that?" he muttered into her neck, raising goosebumps across her collarbone.

"I don't mean to," she said, her voice sounding smaller than she'd intended.

He squeezed her harder for a second before pulling back with a smile. It was the fun, happy smile he gave to all his friends, and she smiled back, relieved.

"Give me the tour?" she asked.

He rolled his eyes. "This place is so plain and boring. It's got none of the charm of your flat."

"Charm can be added," she insisted, slipping out of his arms and patting the wall in search of a light switch. She found a dimmer switch and turned it, blinking. His living room was indeed strangely similar to his old bedroom, down to the mezzanine and the zoo enclosure-like windows. Only the fun things were missing: the climbing wall, football table, basketball hoop and skating ramps were all conspicuously absent, along with any trace of colour. The walls were white, with the exception of the one behind the sofa, which was the same dark grey as the thick rug beneath it. The floor was varnished wood, but even it was grey. It wasn't just "more of the same", it was worse.

He'd come to stand next to her and was staring glumly at the opposite wall.

"Come on, show me around," she said, elbowing him in the ribs.

"Fiiine," he said dramatically. He turned to the door to the left of the sofa, opened it, and switched on the light. "Kitchen," he said, before switching the light off again and moving to close the door.

"Hey, not so fast!" She pushed past him and slapped the light back on.

"It's just a kitchen," he said.

Marinette took in the brand new dishwasher, the double oven, the induction hob, the marble countertops, the shining row of stainless steel pots hanging from laquered grey cabinets and matching table, the smooth black and white tiles, before turning her deadpan gaze back to her embarassingly rich best friend.

"'Just' a kitchen, huh."

He glanced defensively back at her. "What's special about it?"

"You have a dishwasher. And a double oven! Hell, you have a proper table to eat at. Alya is going to go apeshit in here. You won't be able to get rid of her."

"Hey, if Alya wants to cook for me, I'm not stopping her. _I_ can handle my spices."

"You can't tease Mylène and Nath over something like that, they can't help it."

"They're not even here!"

"Exactly, you backstabber. Show me the rest."

The door on the other side of the sofa led to a spacious bathroom, decorated in the same black and white tile pattern as the kitchen.

She punched him lightly in the shoulder without taking her eyes off the room.

"Ow! What what that for?"

"You have a washer _and_ a dryer!"

"So?"

"So we all have to drag our laundry down five flights of stairs and up the street to get it clean, you privileged asshole!"

"You can come and wash it here?" he suggested weakly, and she scoffed.

"That'd take way longer."

"Use Kaalki."

She rolled her eyes at him.

"I'm gonna use Kaalki to punch you in your sleep if you're not careful."

"She'd never agree to that. I'm Kaalki's favourite."

She poked him sharply in the ribs and pushed him out of the room ahead of her, smacking the lights off on her way.

"What's up there?" She pointed up the stairs leading to the mezzanine.

"Bedroom, study."

" _Study?_ "

He shrugged helplessly, following as she headed up the stairs. There were two doors, one leading to a nondescript white room containing a desk, his triple-screened computer, and nothing else, and the other led to his bedroom, in which there were two more doors.

"You have a walk-in closet _and an en-suite bathroom?_ " she whisper-shrieked.

He said nothing, leaning against the doorframe with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his Gabriel jeans while she explored. The en-suite was just a smaller version of the downstairs bathroom, and the closet was big enough to put a single bed in, and lined with shelves. She came out with an odd sense of injustice knotting her gut, which she saw reflected in the hunched way he was holding himself, not looking at her. The only difference was in the feelings it woke in them: anger in her, shame in him.

"Wanna swap?" she asked, poking his arm.

He gave her a self-depricating smile.

"Anytime," he said, and she couldn't find it in herself to tease him any more. She knew that given the chance, Adrien would have swapped places with her in an instant. Hell, sometimes she wished she could switch places with him just so he could catch a break.

Something about the bed caught her eye, and she turned to look at it, frowning.

"Have you been sleeping without bedsheets?"

This time his face flushed so red that she saw it from the corner of her eye. He mumbled something under his breath, and she grinned.

"What was that?"

He scowled at his feet.

"You don't know how to put them on, do you?"

If she thought he couldn't get any redder, she was wrong. Marinette burst out laughing. Adrien turned his scowl on her, which only made her laugh harder. He took one hand out of his pocket just long enough to shove her onto the bed in question.

"I tried, okay?" he grumbled as she rolled over on the rumpled duvet cover, clutching her stomach. "It's harder than it looks."

Marinette sat up, wiping her eyes. "I know how hard it is, you _baby_. I've been putting sheets on my bed since I was ten."

"Then show me!" he exclaimed.

"Don't you have some kind of turn-down service in a place like this?"

"I asked them not to come," he mumbled. "If I'm going to live alone, then I don't want any more strangers coming into my space. Besides," he added, even more quietly. "I'm going to need to know all this someday. My dad can't keep me under his thumb forever."

Marinette smiled up at him fondly.

"Fine, I'll show you. Once," she said, standing up. "Where are your bedsheets?"

He brightened up immediately, skirting the bed and pulling a wrinkled pile of dark grey bedsheets out of a box. Like everything else in his flat, they looked and smelled brand new.

"Okay, now drop those on the floor and take the pillows and duvet off the bed," she instructed, helping him. "Now, grab that fitted sheet – the white one with the elastic in the corners. Turn it... oh, you have a king sized bed, so I guess it doesn't matter which way you put it on. Lay it flat – no, the other way around, so you can't see the seams."

Once they were done dressing the mattress, Marinette picked up a pillow case. "We're going to start small, but we're basically doing the same thing here as you're going to do with the duvet cover," she explained. "First, turn it inside out."

"Inside out?"

"Yes, you'll see why. Now put your arms inside, grab the corners furthest from the opening, and _then_ grab the corners of your pillow..."

"I could've probably just stuffed the pillow in," Adrien said.

"Why didn't you?"

"I got _really_ frustrated with the duvet cover."

Marinette snickered, and he pouted.

"Hey, you did it!"

Adrien blinked, looking down at the dark grey pillow in his hands. "Oh. I did it."

"Ready to tackle the duvet cover?"

"There's this thing, too, which I don't know what to do with," he said, picking a white sheet out of the tangled mass of linen.

"That's for summer. Or, well, some people put them under the duvet cover for extra heat, but you have to tuck it under the mattress, and it gets untucked every time you get into bed, so really they're more trouble than they're worth."

"Summer. Gotcha." He balled up the sheet and threw it across the room without another glance.

Marinette smirked. "Done like a proper student. Nino would be proud."

"At least one of my dads is proud of me," Adrien sighed dramatically, wiping an imaginary tear from his eye.

The duvet cover was the hardest to tackle, but what Adrien lacked in experience, he made up for in height.

"This must be really hard for you," he said, grinning at her around the duvet he was holding above his head. The bottom of it just brushed the ground.

"Shut up, Mister housework virgin."

He burst out laughing as he threw the duvet onto the bed. " _Housework virgin?_ "

"Well, aren't you?"

"You could have thought of something better than _housework virgin_."

"Yeah, well, it's one o' clock in the morning and I'm a twenty minute roof run away from home, teaching my spoilt brat of a best friend how to make his bed," she retorted, stretching. "I'm tired, okay?"

"It's half one, actually," Adrien said sheepishly after checking his phone. "Do you want to stay over?I don't want you falling off a roof. I could wake you up early enough to get home. I could make breakfast, even!"

Marinette looked at him, the hope in his eyes poking holes in her heart in more ways than one. Adrien didn't mean anything by inviting her, he was just lonely. Very lonely.

"Thanks Adrien, but if I won't be any less clumsy first thing in the morning. Besides, if I swing up to our roof at 7AM when everyone's having breakfast, there's a huge chance of me getting caught."

"That's true," he conceded, his smile fading.

Marinette skirted the bed and leaned up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, resisting the urge to linger there. "Besides, I don't trust your cooking skills," she added, turning to leave the room. "I'll come hang out some other time. When I don't have an eight o' clock class the next morning."

"You can teach me how to cook?" he said hopefully, following her down the stairs.

"You should ask Alya, she's a way better cook than I am. I can teach you how to bake, though."

"I want to learn how to make passionfruit macarons"

"Woah there tiger, macarons are a boss-level pastry. We'll start with cookies, okay?"

He chuckled. "Cookies, then. Next time. You promise?"

Marinette turned just as Tikki joined them, nuzzling first Adrien's, then Marinette's cheek.

"Promise," said Marinette, planting a tiny kiss on her kwami's head. "Ready?" she asked her.

Tikki nodded.

"Spots on," she said, and this time the light wasn't quite so blinding.

Ladybug reached out to hug Adrien goodbye, and then remembered that she was in costume and paused. He was looking at her uncertainly with his own arms half-raised, and she thought, _Screw it. So what if Ladybug and Adrien are friends? Who's going to care?_

She walked into his arms and hugged him, her head settling into its familiar spot on his shoulder. It felt a little odd to feel warm cotton against her masked cheek instead of the cool, leathery fabric of his costume, especially when she could feel the heat of his hands through the skin-tight suit almost as though they were on her skin.

_This is why it's weird,_ she thought. _I can't feel his body heat as much through his suit, but I can feel more through_ my _suit than through my clothes._

She allowed herself to relax a little, noticing the threads of heat weaving fire into her skin, but not minding so much this time.

_It's not his fault I'm hormonal,_ she decided. _That's all it is. Hormones._

She pulled away before her hormones could persuade her to do something stupid, and decided to voice her idea from earlier.

"If you can't come over as Adrien, maybe I could come over as Ladybug, so you don't get caught as Chat Noir by our friends?" she said.

Adrien's eyebrows disappeared under his fringe. "Would you be okay with that? There are security cameras everywhere here."

Ladybug grimaced. She'd forgotten about those.

"Well, maybe not too often, then."

"I could ask Plagg to take care of them for me?" he suggested, a Chat grin lighting up his face.

"Don't," she warned.

"Or you could use the fox miraculous to get past them unnoticed?"

"Carrying a fusion is hard," she whined. "Also, I don't want to spend my whole time here making sure Trixx and Plagg don't destroy the building."

Adrien chuckled. "Good point. I forgot how they are when they're together."

Ladybug opened the window.

"Text me when you get home?" he asked.

She glanced back over her shoulder, and the look in his eyes made her wonder again if her proposition was a mistake.

_Stop it, you're being ridiculous. He doesn't see you that way. Even if he did, there's no point if he only loves you as Ladybug._

"I will," she said, and she flung herself out the window before he could see the turmoil in her eyes, catching herself on the building opposite.

Her phone read 2:17AM when she snuck in, Tikki phasing tiredly into her pincushion box without even saying goodnight. Marinette sent a Adrien a text as promised, collapsing on her chaise. She was too tired to climb into bed.

His reply came almost immediately:

> **Night night Princess <3**

She frowned sleepily at the screen. "Princess" was the nickname Chat Noir gave Marinette. He hadn't made any mistakes with nicknames in years. Maybe the visit had made him think they could relax the rules a bit. She'd have to talk to him about that.

She yawned again, letting her phone slip from her hand to the worn rug below.

Tomorrow.


	4. Monsieur Nuage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Hawky is having empty-nest syndrome.

There had been five akumas this week, and all of them had been uncharacteristically depressing. Even Chat Noir was getting sick of them.

"Look, I'll take _any_ excuse to skip class, believe me, but this is getting ridiculous!" he yelled up at the sentient, wailing cloud raining large blue drops on the citizens, which made them cry uncontrollably on contact.

The cloud paused in its sobbing and turned slightly. Hawkmoth's purple mask glowed, turning the cloud an eerie shade of lilac, and the sobbing redoubled. The cloud started floating slowly in their direction.

Dodging it was pointlessly easy.

"Any idea where the akuma might be?" came Ladybug's voice from just behind him, in subtle harmony with the wirr of her yoyo.

"In the middle of it maybe?"

"How can a cloud hold a solid object?"

"Are all akumas necessarily held in solid objects?"

There was a pause while they thought about this, stepping out of the cloud's path and walking around until they were behind it. The cloud hovered for a moment, it's disembodied "WAAAH!" turning into a "Huh?" before floating after them again.

"I can't think of any akumas that weren't held in solid objects," Ladybug said, frowning.

" _I_ can't believe we've never thought about this before."

They reached the edge of the roof, and instead of leaping onto the next one, Ladybug guided Chat Noir into a defensive crouch in front of her.

"I'm going to try something, stay close..."

She shot her yoyo haphazardly through the cloud as it approached them, but nothing happened. When the rain reached them, she spun her weapon over their heads as a shield, scattering the blue droplets. She walked out from under the raincloud, Chat Noir sticking close and waving his baton as a second shield. He was getting frustrated.

"This one interrupted the one class I have any interest in," he grumbled, taking a defensive stance once they reached the other side of the roof again.

"Oh? What's that?"

"Ethics and Sustainability."

"Oh, I have a class like that!"

"You do? What do you-"

"Look out!"

A spin of her yoyo was enough to shield them both from the rain again.

"Sorry," said Chat Noir, crouching behind her as they moved out from under the cloud again.

"You can't let you guard down just because this one's slow," Ladybug said, but she, too, sounded distracted. "Have you noticed that all of the akumas this week have been sad instead of angry?"

"I've mostly noticed that there are more of them than usual," Chat Noir muttered, straightening up next to her. "But yeah. Hey Hawkface!" He shouted, cupping his hands over his mouth. "You seem kinda off your game this week, are you okay?"

The cloud stopped in its tracks, briefly lit up by the purple mask again.

For the first time, the sobbing voice spoke.

"He says 'shut up and do your jobs.'" The cloud's voice was tear-strained, but it paused again, sniffling, as though waiting for them to reply. The superhero pair stood, stunned, for several awkward seconds.

 _...Do your jobs?_ Ladybug mouthed the words incredulously.

Chat Noir recovered first.

"Look, Hawky, if you're not feeling it today, we can totally reschedule," he called out, his face comically straight, as though he were talking to a hungover Nino.

"Yeah," Ladybug chimed in. "Just, y'know, get Cloudy here to give us his akumatized object, we'll purify it, and then everyone can go back to their lives for the day."

"My name is _Monsieur Nuage!_ " The cloud corrected her querulously.

"Or, Hawkster, my good friend, you could just, y'know, come and hand over your miraculous. I mean, there's gotta be a healthier way to work through a depression than by seeking out other depressed people and giving them the power to make _everyone_ depressed."

"We could find you a therapist!"

"Yeah, they have therapists in prison!"

"Shh, don't mention prison," Ladybug stage-whispered, causing Chat Noir to snigger.

The purple mask glowed once more, and they tensed, waiting.

"He says I have to get your miraculouses," the cloud whined, its voice cracking.

"And how are you going to do that with no solid hands?" Chat Noir asked dubiously.

"I don't knooow!" the cloud sobbed, and the blue rain splashing onto the roof in front of them turned into a downpour.

Ladybug and Chat Noir jumped aside, dodging the splashing rain, but the cloud didn't make a move towards them, apparently too absorbed in its own misery to even try any more.

"Let's just get this over with," Ladybug muttered. "Lucky Charm!"

"An extension cord?" said Chat Noir, eyeing the red-and-black thing critically, but his Lady was already scanning their surroundings with that gleam in her eye that he loved so much.

"Got it," she said quickly. "Try to keep him here!" She was already swinging down towards the building across the street, where several people had gathered to watch behind closed windows.

Chat Noir turned back to the cloud, who didn't look inclined to move.

"So, um. What's got you so bummed?"

"They got my name wrong!" the cloud sobbed.

"Oh, uh..."

"It's not just that," the cloud interrupted. "I've just been having, like, the _worst_ week..."

Chat Noir listened with mounting sympathy and horror as the cloud told him about arriving late for a job interview after getting food poisoning the night before, from a restaurant in which he'd just been loudly dumped by his boyfriend because he'd dared to keep in touch with the mother of his twins, one of whom was being bullied and had just been diagnosed with a learning disability...

"...and after all that when I walked into that Starbucks, I just, I know they do it to everyone and it's a thing and it's fine, but I was so upset and the thing is that _everyone gets my name wrong all the time,_ and I, I just..."

Ladybug reappeared holding a large, professional-looking hairdryer.

"You're doing great Monsieur Nuage, just hang tight for me, okay?" she called as she switched it on, aiming at the cloud.

The akumatized object was a soggy, crumpled paper cup, and the victim was a short, handsome-looking man in his mid-thirties.

"What...?"

"You were akumatized, sir," Chat Noir, placing a hand on his shoulder while Ladybug purified the akuma and send magical ladybugs flying across Paris to repair the damage.

The mans eyes widened in horror. "Did I hurt anyone?!" he cried.

"No, you just made a few people cry," Chat Noir told him. "Look, I'm sorry about your job interview and your ex-boyfriend and your kid. That's a lot of bad luck in one go – believe me, I know all about bad luck."

The man burst into tears again. "I can't believe I told you all that!"

"Hey, you needed to talk to someone, and I offered," Chat Noir said kindly.

"Sir, honestly, you were one of the nicest akumas we've ever met," said Ladybug, smiling as she walked over.

The man sniffled, glancing up at them both from behind his arms.

"Really?"

"Yeah," said Chat Noir. "All you did was get people to cry, where's the harm in that? Everyone needs a good cry now and then."

The man sniffled as he stood, brushing dust off his wrinkled suit.

"I guess you're right," he said. "I usually try to be so positive, too, I guess I'm not used to just..."

"Letting it out?" Ladybug supplied.

"Yeah."

*

"I swear, next time there's a crying akuma during Ethics, I'm waiting until my class ends before heading out."

Ladybug swallowed her mouthful of sandwich and turned to her partner, frowning.

"You can't do that. Some of them are destructive. Baby Auguste flooded Paris, remember?"

Chat Noir rolled his eyes at his goody-two-shoes superhero partner. He was eating hoop-shaped crisps for dessert, hooking them on his claws. Technically he was cheating on his diet, but Adrien's dietician didn't know that he moonlighted as a superhero.

"Besides, wouldn't they evacuate anyway?" Ladybug added.

Chat Noir shrugged and changed the subject.

"We should stop calling him "Baby" Auguste, I think," he said, flicking one of the crisps into the air so that it flipped over three times before landing in his mouth. His record so far was five flips. Ladybug's was six.

"Why not?" she asked.

Chat Noir offered her the last crisp, and she waved him away with her sandwich. "Auguste got akumatized because a classmate was calling him a baby," he pointed out.

Ladybug pouted. "He still looks like a baby to me."

"He's five," Chat Noir pointed out with a lopsided smile. "He'll be in primary school next year."

Ladybug groaned. "That's crazy. It went by so fast. I feel old and I'm not even twenty!"

"You're not even _nineteen_."

"Doesn't have the same ring to it."

She ate in silence for a few more minutes while Chat Noir contemplated the horizon. After a while she felt full. She offered the rest of her sandwich to Chat Noir, who made short work of it.

"Isn't it messed up that Ba- Auguste doesn't remember what it was like before there were akumas?" Ladybug said quietly.

Chat Noir turned to her, eyes narrowed. "Are you guilt-tripping yourself again?"

"No!" Ladybug denied just a little too quickly.

"You _are!_ Buggaboo, when are you going to stop blaming yourself for the bad deeds of others?"

Ladybug rolled her eyes, shoulders slumping. "I know, I know, stop blaming myself because we're basically victims who've had our childhoods cut short so we could fight a magical terrorist blah blah."

"I never said we were victims," Chat Noir countered. "While I could _definitely_ argue that point in your case, especially with the Guardianship, becoming Chat Noir was the best thing that ever happened to me."

Ladybug frowned. "Becoming Ladybug was good for me, too, y'know," she said. "I wouldn't have learned to stand up to Chloe as quickly as I did, or had the confidence to run for class president, if I hadn't become Ladybug."

Chat Noir nodded. "Becoming superheroes is a confidence booster, that's for sure. It's also way too much responsibility to put on the shoulders of a pair of thirteen-year-olds. Master Fu was a sweet guy, but he was also _insane_."

"He was just following his training," Ladybug said weakly. They'd had this conversation before, and she was finding it more and more difficult to defend her old mentor.

"He had over a century to realize that those techniques were cruel and inefficient. Hell, he was a victim of them himself. He knew exactly how disastrous it could be to trust _children_ with that much power, and he did it anyway."

Ladybug hugged her knees to her chest. "I liked Master Fu," she mumbled.

Chat Noir's hand came to rest between her shoulderblades, warm even through his suit. "I liked him too, what little I saw of him," he said gently. "You can like someone and still recognize that they did you wrong. I think that if we had the chance to discuss it with him now, he'd totally regret it."

Ladybug sighed and let herself fall against Chat Noir's side. His arm wrapped itself around her shoulders as he rested his cheek against her hair.

"None of that makes me feel any better about the fact that we haven't found Hawkmoth yet," she muttered.

Chat Noir snorted softly. "Like that's our fault. We've been trying for years, on top of dealing with akuma attacks, patrols, not to mention hiding all that from the people in our full-time civilian lives. Sometimes I wonder what'll happen when we get too old to do this any more."

Ladybug shivered. "I'm never choosing a child for this again," she said.

"Isn't Mylène seventeen still?" Chat Noir nudged her, and she rolled her eyes.

"I chose her when I was fourteen, it doesn't count. I meant in the future. If ever..."

"If ever we haven't found Hawkmoth before we have to retire as superheroes?"

Ladybug grimaced. "Yeah. That."

Chat Noir lightly tapped Ladybug's nose, making her blink and removing her frown.

"My point still stands either way," he said. "You can't blame yourself for not being perfect. You're already amazing, M'lady."

The softness in his voice, just above her ear, unravelled the knots of doubt in her belly and filled it with fluttery warmth instead. Ladybug closed her eyes and leaned into him. She had long since learned not to overanalyse these feelings, opting simply to enjoy them while they lasted. They couldn't be together, so there was no point wondering if they really wanted to be. Not while Hawkmoth was around.

A flash of light startled her eyes open, and Ladybug glanced around to find they were being watched.

"Drone, 2 o'clock," she murmured, feeling Chat Noir tense.

"Can I cataclysm it this time?" he grumbled.

" _No_ , Chat."

He pulled away slightly, the hand around her shoulders sliding up until he was cupping her chin, tilting her face towards his. He wiggled his eyebrows with a suggestive smirk.

"Then how about we give the people what they want for once?"

Ladybug would never admit that his grin, once goofy and childish, had grown with him to become something far more captivating. _That smirk could tempt a saint,_ she thought, not for the first time. She pushed him away with a finger to the bridge of his nose before her faltering heartbeat could translate into a blush.

"Let's just get this over with."

"As you wish, M'lady."

*

Later that day, Chat Noir knocked the door of Max's student dorm, holding a somewhat beaten but salvageable drone.

Max accepted the offering with enthusiasm.


	5. Property Damage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Filler chapter with some Adrienette / Roof Squad silliness. I don't actually have much of a plan for what comes next, but this chapter sets it up.
> 
> Trigger Warning for mentions of mental illness, including anxiety, bipolar disorder, and unspecified eating disorders. It really is just a mention, though.
> 
> Also, yes, some of the characters smoke. I don't condone smoking, but it felt kinda unrealistic that none of them would ever start, so there you go.

Adrien was sitting cross-legged on the Roof Squad's ratty kitchen sofa, thrashing Nino at Ultimate Mecha Strike IV, when he heard the front door open, followed by Marinette's voice. He felt a familiar tug in his chest, like his heart was beating towards her. A side effect of their miraculous bond, probably – Adrien had long since stopped trying to analyse the complex mass of feelings he held for his partner; analysis was her strong suit, not his, and Plagg had no patience for it. He was happy just to have her in his life. Besides, their relationship – whichever form it was taking at the time – seemed to work best when he went with whatever felt natural.

Which, nowadays, mostly amounted to teasing.

He called out to her as she passed by the kitchen door, and she paused in the doorway to reply.

"Hey, Tiny."

"Hey, Noodle."

"Pixie."

"Giant."

"Shorty."

"Beanstalk."

He shot a sidelong glance at her, wondering if he dared. The name on the tip of his tongue wasn't one _he'd_ naturally call anyone, but Marinette's distaste for it was hilariously disproportionate.

He smirked. "Hey, _Bébé_."

Marinette's eyes narrowed down to slits. "Ooh, you did _not!"_

She ran into the kitchen, threw herself half over the back of the sofa, yanked Nino's controller from his unprotesting hands, and killed Adrien's character dead in less a thirty seconds, breaking his winning streak and wiping the smirk off his face.

Adrien turned to pout at her as she stood, radiating smugness right down to the click of her heels on the kitchen tiles. She dropped the controller on the sofa between the two boys with a dainty flourish, blowing him a kiss as she positively _sashayed_ back to the door. The movement caused Adrien's eyes – curse them – to linger on the curve of her lower back just a second too long before he noticed the three people staring in at them with uncontained awe.

_Oops._

"Is that-?" one of them – a dark-haired boy – whisper-screamed, pointing at him. Adrien felt the model smile plaster itself to his face even as his stomach dropped unpleasantly. He gave the group a small wave and turned back to the screen, hoping they'd get the message without taking it the wrong way.

"Yep, that's Noodle," Marinette was saying.

"Marinette, that is _Adrien Agreste!_ "

"Mmhm, sure is. Come on, my room's this way." There was some shuffling and spluttering as she herded the gawkers away from him, and he just about heard a girl hiss "You can't call _Adrien Agreste_ a _noodle_!" before their voices were muffled by Nino turning up the volume. Adrien shot him a grateful look.

"You might have to talk to those three at some point," Nino said quietly as he chose his next character. "Marinette introduced them to us, they're her new friends from class."

Adrien groaned. "Inès, Clémence and Noam, right?" He murmured, glancing back towards the now-empty doorway.

Nino raised an eyebrow. "Clémentine, not Clémence. But yeah."

Adrien tugged fretfully on the shorter hairs at the back of his head. "What are they like?"

Nino shrugged. "They seem decent. Marinette attracts good people, so there's probably nothing to worry about, beyond them being a little starstruck at first."

Adrien hovered between two characters for a second, distracted and increasingly uncomfortable. It hadn't occurred to him that he might meet fans here, in a place he'd figured he could be himself without it impacting his father's brand. He sighed.

"Could we maybe hang out in your room for a bit?" Adrien placed his controller on the massive wooden chest that served as a coffee table. "I'm not really feeling up to... y'know. Right now."

"Dealing with fans?" Nino gave him a lopsided smile and got up to switch off the console. "I got you, bro. My room's across the corridor though, and they're probably still out there. Let's head to the roof."

The breeze outside was cool, but not yet cold, and the heat of the day still radiated from the concrete beneath their feet. Mylène, Ivan and Marc were already there, sitting in white plastic chairs around a wooden spool table. Mylène was rolling a cigarette – she and Nathaniel were the only members of their old class to smoke apart from Chloe, to the open disapproval of everyone else. (Adrien, admittedly, had tried one of Chloe's once – just out of curiosity – and been completely put off by the taste. He'd concluded that becoming addicted to nicotine took more dedication than teen rebellion was worth).

"Boo," he said, pointing an accusing finger at Mylène as he sat next to her in one of the plastic chairs. She stuck her tongue out at him.

"You joining our meeting, Sunshine?" asked Alya. Adrien hadn't heard her follow them out. Sometimes he wondered if her short time weilding the fox miraculous had made her extra-stealthy.

She flopped down into the seat beside him and, seeing his puzzled look, explained: "Tonight's our weekly meet-up, where we talk about chores and schedules and stuff. It's pretty boring, but you're welcome to stay for it."

"We usually order take-out on meeting nights," Ivan added.

"Are you sure I can stay?" asked Adrien.

"Don't see why not," Nino said, before addressing Alya. "Are the others coming?"

"Marinette's passing notes to her friends, she should be done soon."

"Nath's painting," Marc said, getting up. "I'll get him." He walked over to the glass door next to Marinette's and knocked. Adrien saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Someone was watching him from Marinette's window, and it wasn't her. He looked away.

"Not feeling sociable enough for fans today?" Mylène murmured sympathetically. Adrien shrugged, uncomfortable, and she patted his arm with a small chuckle. "It's fine, Adrien. We're all introverts in this household."

"Speak for yourself," Alya said, at the same time as Adrien said, "I'm not an introvert."

"He's not," Nino confirmed. "Dude's _needy_."

"I'm friendly!" Adrien protested.

"You got in trouble for hugging us too much in _lycée_ , bro," Nino pointed out, and the group cackled at the memory.

Adrien frowned. "Am I still doing that?"

Nino, Alya, Mylène and Ivan all rushed to reassure him at once.

"No no, you're fine!"

"Those teachers were just being killjoys, dude."

"We like your hugs!"

"I'm at least as bad as you are, Sunshine."

"My point is," Nino said, "that yes, you're an extrovert, but it's more than that. We've talked about your abandonment issues before. You _hate_ being alone."

Nino was right, they'd talked about Adrien's issues – and everyone else's – as recently as last Friday, during an improvised (and possibly illegal) barbecue on the roof that had turned unexpectedly deep as the night wore on. Now everyone in the Roof Squad knew Adrien hated being alone, just as Adrien knew that Mylène took medication for her anxiety, that Alya and Marc both had eating disorders (he'd felt guilty for not knowing that about Alya before – she was like a sister to him by now), and that Nathaniel had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder last year. Adrien trusted them all the way they trusted him.

Marinette's classmates, on the other hand...

"Can we not talk about my issues right now?" Adrien murmured, shooting a nervous glance towards Marinette's window. The curtain was drawn – she'd sewn herself a proper curtain since last week – and he could see no more movement behind it.

Nino followed Adrien's gaze and his eyes widened. He hissed an apology – "Shit, sorry bro," - barely avoiding a kick from Alya when Nathaniel poked his head out of his window and Marinette joined them from the kitchen, holding a clipboard and pencil.

"They're gone," she reassured Adrien. "But I'll have to introduce you next time."

"Were they pissed that I didn't come over to say hi?" he asked, grimacing.

"Nah, they understand. They'll be fine once they figure out you're just a dork like the rest of us."

"Okay everyone," Alya called before he could reply to that, clapping her hands as Marc and Nathaniel took their seats around the table. Marinette realized too late that she had nowhere to sit, and glared at Adrien.

"You're in my seat, Noodle."

He grinned at her, gripping the arms of the plastic chair possessively, but not quite daring to suggest she sit on his lap outside of the costume.

Alya had no such qualms. "He _is_ your seat, Marinette."

Marinette tried to sit on Alya instead. There was a short tussle and lots of indignant shouting, and Adrien had to lean away to avoid catching an elbow to the temple.

"Adrien – ow! – help me out here!" Alya gasped as Marinette poked her mercilessly with the pencil.

Adrien grabbed Marinette around the waist and pulled her into his lap. She let out a surprised yelp, and tried to stamp on his foot with her heel. The plastic chair creaked dangerously under their combined weight.

"Not fair!" she pouted.

"All's fair in love and war," Nino quoted from the relative safety of the other side of the table.

"Which one's this, love or war?" Alya giggled, dodging Marinette's attempts to hit her with the clipboard.

"Both," said at least three of the other roommates. Marinette turned to glare at them, and was met with shit-eating grins on all sides.

"Adrien, you're supposed to be on _my_ side!" She whined, half-turning to pout at her him.

"Alya's scarier, even without the weapons," he retorted, hugging her firmly around the waist and ducking his head behind her back so she couldn't turn said weapons on him.

Of course, if she really wanted to, Marinette could have escaped his grasp within seconds. Adrien may be physically stronger than her (out of costume at least), but Marinette was fast and slippery, and she knew all of his weak points from sparring with him.

Marinette sighed dramatically and sat back against him, placing the clipboard and pencil on the table and her hands regally on the armrests. Adrien relaxed. Nino had been right: Adrien revelled in the proximity, all the more precious because it was _her_ , his partner and best friend and much, much more (but he was trying not to think about that at the moment). It wasn't comfortable, he was sure his legs would be numb by the end of the meeting, but the bubble of warmth in his chest was worth it. Even if he did have to crane his neck a little to peep over her shoulder.

"I want the record to show that I was forced into this against my will, and any attempt to use it as shipping fodder will be disregarded by the jury," Marinette declared.

"Granted!" Alya said quickly. "Now, let's get on with this meeting. Marinette, do you have the agenda?"

As Marinette settled more comfortably in his lap, Adrien watched the meeting go on with mixed feelings. On the one hand, he was fascinated to see his usually chaotic friends organize their collective lives together for the next week with more efficiency than many of the business meetings he'd attended with his father – despite it being entirely casual. He wondered what the difference was, and whether he should bring it up with one of his lecturers.

However, as the meeting went on, Adrien couldn't ignore the way the warmth in his chest faded, cooling right down to cold and heavy stone. This meeting was for them, not him. He might be permitted to sit in on it, but just like with his father's meetings, his input was neither necessary nor desired.

Later, he would wonder if Marinette had sensed his mood, or if she'd been planning it from the beginning. Either way, twenty minutes in, when Alya asked what they should do collectively that week, Marinette hooked one arm around Adrien's neck in something between a hug and a choke hold – nearly poking him in the eye with her pencil – and shouted "Adrien's housewarming party!"

Adrien blinked, pushing the pencil away gingerly. "What?" He said. Then, watching his friends' expressions morph from surprise to manic enthusiasm: "Wait wait wait... I wasn't aware I was having a housewarming party."

"You are now," said Nino. His usually laid back friend had that determined gleam in his eye that Adrien rarely saw, but he knew it was pointless to oppose.

He tried, nontheless.

"I don't even know if I'm allowed to have parties!"

"Come on, what's the worst that can happen?" asked Alya.

"I could get thrown out of the building and have to go back to living with my dad," Adrien deadpanned.

"You could come live with us instead," Nino suggested, looking far too keen on the idea of the worst happening.

"Yeah, you could have my room," Alya chimed in. "I spend most of my time in Nino's anyway."

Adrien noted with some alarm that Alya had ignored a prime opportunity to suggest he share Marinette's room. That meant she'd actually given it some thought. A quick glance at the rest of the group told him she wasn't the only one.

 _Have they discussed this?_ He wondered, feeling an odd combination of tenderness and trepidation. More importantly, how had the conversation gone from him having a housewarming party to him moving in with them so quickly?

"They probably won't throw you out," Nathaniel said, interrupting his thoughts. Nathaniel hadn't spoken for most of the meeting, and everyone turned to listen to him now. "Students have parties, and the richer they are, the more extravagent they get. If you haven't heard any in your building yet, it's probably just a matter of time. Or good soundproofing, maybe. Either way, the worst they'd do is tell your dad if there was any property damage."

"If you just don't want to have a party at your place, though, that's fine," Marc added. "It's your choice."

The group turned back to Adrien, watching his reaction. He could sense Marinette's uncertainty, and he just _knew_ she was second-guessing her suggestion, could practically hear her kicking herself for putting him on the spot.

Something about that thought cemented it for him. After all, Marinette was right: a housewarming party sounded fantastic, and he was touched by the idea. The only thing stopping him were the potential repercussions with his father.

"Okay, let's do it," he said, and his smile grew wider as they whooped and cheered in response. "But no property damage," he added jokingly.

"Pff, who do you take us for," Alya snorted, a little too loud to be completely credible.

"My boy's letting loose!" Nino crowed, before clapping to get everyone's attention. "Now, let's figure out the details."

Marinette squeezed him round the shoulders, and he squeezed her waist in return, making a conscious effort not to bury his nose in her hair or kiss her cheek in delight. The warmth in his chest was back, swelling like a balloon, making him giddy. Even if he didn't live with his friends, the fact that they were making efforts to include him was priceless.

Or at least, worth far more than a little property damage.


End file.
